Child benefits ?? I am so confused what we would be entitled to

[shell1983]

Hi everyone

My partner and I have decided to start trying for a baby.

I work fulltime and earn a decent wage, my partner is self employed and brings home a good income.

I am so confused what benefits we would be entitled to if any, and if it would be worth me returning to fulltime work after my maternity pay would have finished.

Also i have no idea how much maternity pay even is !

Any help and advice would be much appreciated, we are already worrying about money and I am not even pregnant yet !

SMP Is about £125 pw. The stat minimum is 90 % pf pay for the first 6 weeks followed by smp upto 9 months. some empolyera are more generous though. you can take a further three months unpaid. Child benefit is about £0 pw for the first child but this will be withdrawn if either parent earns at the higher rate of tax. tax credits are avail for household income of upto about £41k but how much you get depends on hours worked and childcare costs, not sure how it is worked out. It is much more difficult when you are SE because it relies on a forecast of earnings which is very difficult

sorry shd say CB £20 pw

thanks vivkibee for the info thats a great help.

Right i need to find out how these tax credits are worked out, i have also realised that my boyfreind wont be classed as self employed because he runs and owns his own ltd company so he says its not actually classed as self employed - i wonder if this is correct??

Are tax credits something that you get each month or is it just a yearly payment ?

I would most likely have to go back to work and would do 30 hours and my other half does about 45 hours and our household income would not be over 41k, we are hoping to mainly rely on grandparents for childcare at least for the first year perhaps.

omg i just went on there and filled out my details and it said we would only be entitled to £10.43 a week ! Are they having a laugh? We have worked hard and paid our taxes all these years and thats all the help you get back when you want to raise a family :(

We get £300 every four weeks for tax credits but we have childcare costs as part of our calculation
Shell you are right in thinking your partner is not SE he will be an employee of the limited company and recieve an annual salary.You will probably get more if you are on SMP as your income will be a lot lower. In addtion you used to get what was called a baby element which was far more generous for Dc's up to one year but this has been scrapped.

Why should the taxpayer give you money to bring up a family when you have a good family income?

You'll get child benefit on top of that.

I have had a play about the the calculator on the turn to us website and no matter what i enter it still says £10.45, its difficult i suppose to work out seen as i do not have a baby yet and i am just trying to see what help we would get if any.

'Portofino' i dont expect massive hand outs from tax payers but seens as both my partner and i ARE tax payers unlike a lot of people who DO get hand outs for doing nothing- i am dissapointed in my curiosity to what we would actually be entitled to. We would not be on a good family income as you quoted if we were to lose my salary in having a baby.

Anyway i didnt come on here to get into a debate about my original question, i was just doing some logical research before jumping head first into getting pregnant and then realising we could not afford it !

it is such as shame that having kids is governed by finance. Kids are happy if they have a loving home and not all the latest fancy gadgets. We manage on less than 20000 per annum and still provide for our son. Get help with Tax credits and Cb and it would be a stuggle without that help.

Yeah we would manage, i guess its all about restructuring your finances and making a few changes. The economy at the moment it putting such a massive squeeze on everyone and i dont see it getting any easier for people.

But like you said the most important thing is that you love your children and try to teach them that love is more important than having the lastest edition of playstation console or some other expensive gadget !